Wildfires ravage Calif. homes

Catherine SaillantLos Angeles Times

Published Sunday, November 16, 2008

MONTECITO, Calif. -- Jack and Jan Milton shared a bench Saturday overlooking the smoldering remains of their three-bedroom home with its million-dollar views in the hilly Sycamore Canyon area of Montecito.

The couple had hiked around police barricades to confirm the worst.

The devastating Tea wildfire had reduced their cozy, 1,200-square foot home on Conejo Lane to ashes. A rose garden and fruit trees carefully tended for more than three decades were gone. So was Jack's prized 1960 Corvette.

But for this moment, the Miltons were focusing on what had survived. Against the odds, a large cedar hope chest owned by Jan's late mother had emerged charred but intact, apparently due to the couple's last-minute decision to drag it outside the house before fleeing.

Jan Milton, 57, lifted several delicate chiffon aprons -- this one Easter pink, that one holiday red -- once worn by her mother and held them to her waist. Also unscathed were packets of school report cards from Jan Milton's Detroit childhood, carefully preserved by her mother.

"Mom's been gone almost two years and this was a real special thing that I wanted to save," she said of the chest and its contents. "It's all I have left of her."

Stories of devastation and survival began trickling out across Montecito Saturday as residents slowly began returning to their homes. Most of the hardest-hit areas remained under evacuation orders with residents unable to return, as utility companies rushed to repair power lines and firefighters continued putting out hot spots.

Montecito and Santa Barbara officials said they had completed a preliminary property assessment of homes destroyed and damaged in the Tea fire, which started just before 6 p.m. Thursday in high winds.

An evacuation order was lifted Saturday for about 2,000 residents but another 2,500 were being kept out of neighborhoods where flames had swept across mountains in 70 mph winds the previous two days.